Study says pollution from China hitting US
Print Edition
Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of the US demand for cheaper China-made goods.
On some days, acid rain-inducing sulphate from the burning of fossil fuels in China can account for as much as a quarter of sulphate pollution in the western US, a team of Chinese and American researchers said in the report published by the US National Academy of Sciences, a nonprofit society of scholars.
Cities such as Los Angeles receive at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China’s export-dependent factories, it said.
“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.
Between 17 and 36 percent of various air pollutants in China in 2006 were related to the production of goods for export, according to the report, and a fifth of that specifically tied to US-China trade.
A third of China’s greenhouse gases is now from export-based industries, according to Worldwatch Institute, a US-based environmental research group.
The new report showed that many pollutants, including black carbon, which contributes to climate change and is linked to cancer, emphysema and heart and lung diseases, travel huge distances on global winds known as “westerlies.”
Transboundary pollution has for several years been an issue in international climate change negotiations, where China has argued that developed nations should take responsibility for a share of China’s greenhouse gas emissions, because they originate from the production of goods demanded by the West.
The report said its findings showed that trade issues must play a role in global talks to cut pollution. “International cooperation to reduce transboundary transport of air pollution must confront the question of who is responsible for emissions in one country during production of goods to support consumption in another,” it said.
Air quality is of increasing concern to China, and authorities have invested in various projects to fight pollution, with little progress so far.
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